


End of the Line

by TaraTargaryen



Series: The Nuclear Option [7]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Denial of Feelings, Developing Relationship, Dialogue Heavy, F/M, Fate, Feelings, Fluff, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 02:38:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6266230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaraTargaryen/pseuds/TaraTargaryen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chronologically, directly after Duty and Dishonor. Paladin Adams goes MIA after taking out the Railroad and only her mentor has any idea where she would go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	End of the Line

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sleepy I totally can't even think what I was going to write here. 
> 
> Maybe I'll come back later.
> 
> Fixed vault number error! I did say I was tired. My university really knows how to put the ass in assignment, and I promised myself I wasn't allowed to have fun until I'd submitted it. Then I spent like three hours editing this chapter, double-checking all my canon dialogue and deciding what to keep and discard.
> 
> Important mentions: this title is a Railroad quest. Mama Murphy still gets flashes of the Sight even though she's kicked chems. There is also an important reference to Fallout 1. I think a lot of the reason the Fallout franchise resonates so well with me is that history keeps repeating itself. Every one in the wasteland thinks vault dwellers are soft, useless creatures and yet time and time again they are proven wrong. My original Vault Dweller was also the original Hero of the Wasteland. He too, allied with the Brotherhood of Steel. I'll always be a diehard B.O.S. supporter, no matter what Maxson says or does. I've always helped them or joined them, and I always will. Then of course there was the Chosen One and the first Garden of Eden Creation Kit; and the Enclave. So much foreshadowing.
> 
> I actually played New Vegas before Fallout 3. I finished Bethesda's Skyrim about fifty times and was getting bored, plus I'd moved in with my partner who already had NV on the PS3. I have an unpublished fanfic regarding my Courier, the sassy blonde Elle Carter (inspired by Elle Driver from Kill Bill). It was far and away what made me start writing it again and I may eventually decide to publish it here when I can make up my mind about the ending. Fallout 3 broke me. I cried like a bitch when James died and refused to play again for about three weeks. Then when I did get back into it, the Enclave goes and blows up Liberty Prime. That hurt more, I think. When Liberty Prime was destroyed I felt physically ill. It was (not literally) like being orphaned. When I blew up Adams Air Force Base I was absolutely elated. One of my only regrets is that I never went back to vault one-oh-one, not even in a later play through. Too many bad memories, maybe.
> 
> Anyway! Enough of my pointless ramblings, you've played the games, you know how it goes down.

"Paladin Danse?"

Danse dropped the chest plate he was carrying. "Haylen?!" He felt vaguely alarmed. "You're committing treason against the Brotherhood by coming here. You need to leave."  

"I... I just had to see you. For myself. I know you sent me a message, but I had to come. In person. I'm sorry." The young scribe seemed flustered. _There's something she can't tell you in writing,_ Danse realized.

"I'd prefer you didn't take the risk again, Haylen, but as I am no longer a member of the Brotherhood of Steel and therefore not your commanding officer, I have no right to tell you what to do. But I highly suggest taking my advice."

Haylen hesitated. "Of course, sir. I'm just so glad you're alive." She was breathless.

Danse gestured for her to take a seat. She did so, looking around her nervously. "Something wrong, Haylen?" Danse turned back to his power armor.

"Paladin Adams has gone off the grid."

He stiffened.  "She left the Commonwealth?" _She wouldn't._ _Something doesn't sit_ _right._  

"No. I... According to Quinlan, she returned, accepted her promotion from Elder Maxson, and left on a covert operation. Whatever they were doing, it was a huge success, apparently. Maxson joined the troops at the airport base and actually had a drink with them. He hasn't done that since..." The silence was uncomfortable.  

"How did you find out about this?" Danse asked urgently. Haylen looked up. 

"Paladin Brandis and Proctor Teagan. Teagan, I think, suspects you're alive, but he would never say anything. And Brandis and Adams have always been close, you know that. I don't know if he knows you're alive, but he doesn't really believe that Adams killed you."  

 

"Do you have anything else for me to go on?"  

"No. Except that Teagan mentioned the Old North Church. Do you know how many 'north churches' there are? And all of them are old!" Haylen raised her voice in frustration.

Danse was nodding.  "Leave it with me."  

"Danse? Are you... Okay? What happened that night?" Concern was written all over Haylen's face

"She saved my life, twice. First she saved me from myself. Then, she saved me from Arthur." He warmed pleasantly, thinking about it.

"Do you love her?"

The warm feeling vanished, leaving him hard and cold. "Haylen, I'm a synth. I can't love anything."

Haylen walked back to the elevator. "That's where you're wrong." She replied, and the door closed softly behind her.

Danse waited until he had the full cover of night before leaving. He had expertly oiled his newly recycled X-01 Mk II power armor and almost felt like his old self again; indestructible, un-defeatable Paladin Danse. Old North Church was on the mid-ring of Boston, close enough to the Prydwen to make him uneasy. The door had been blasted through. Bodies littered the inside, some wearing a strange uniform, light but sturdy, a kind of strong ballistic fiber Danse had never seen before. Someone had blasted another hole in the wall, and he followed the tunnel down, into the catacombs beneath the church. More corpses lined the walls here; some ghoul, some human; and still more wearing that strange uniform. It fit the description of Kevlar, a pre-War invention lost to time, but Danse couldn't be sure. 

 

Further along, he came across evidence of a third semi-recent explosion. A brick wall opened into an antechamber, with another tunnel in the back. He followed it to a steel door, and examined the structures around it. It was definitely installed post-War. He nosed open the door with the barrel of his gun, safety still on. Yet more bodies littered the floor, but that wasn't what chilled Danse to the core. He looked around the ransacked room, and realized he was standing in the headquarters of the Railroad. _This was Maxson's_ _B_ _ig_ _P_ _lan_ _number 2_ _._ He recognized Desdemona and Glory, from Maxson's List. Someone that might have fit Tinker Tom's description sat against the wall, headless. It was a grim sight to be sure. By the looks of it, they'd caught the Railroad by surprise. It would have been a slaughterhouse. He could picture Adams, in his old paladin class T-60 suit, blowing off their heads like a crimson steel angel of vengeance. _But she knew them._ In several of her reports, she had written about infiltrating their ranks, to source information for the Brotherhood. She'd been on missions with them, gaining their trust. If Arthur had given her a direct order to execute them, she wouldn't _dare_ defy him again, she would have been at the front of the line, proving herself. Danse checked his interface. He didn't have much darkness left, he needed to get out and regroup. He scowled darkly as he realized he was going to have to ask Garvey for help.  

 

He reached his bunker as the rays of the sun touched the edge of the world. He might have stayed outside to watch it rise if he'd had any sleep in the last few days. He had spent most of the time since Adams left feeling sorry for himself, in between trying to not feel sorry for himself and waiting for her to come back. His reflection stared wearily back at him in the stainless steel of the elevator, slightly distorted. His eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, his beard was becoming unkempt. The scar across his brow stood out, like always. Not even dirt could stick to his little parting gift from Cutler.

He recalled the stitches across Adams' cheek with fresh remorse. The elevator doors parted in front of him, and he paused for a moment, peering around. No-one was there. Danse's shoulders slumped, he'd been partially hoping she would turn up here. He was not so lucky. He tentatively tried messaging her personal interface, but both her power armor and her PipBoy were offline. His heart sank. He knew where she was and he was in two minds about disturbing her. He hung his power armor on the rack, recalling their first trek into the Glowing Sea together, to find Virgil. The dead look in her eyes still haunted him. Danse had thought he'd been an expert at having nothing to lose. _Just leave me here to die,_ she'd said. She'd been serious. He had dragged her back anyway.  

 

Danse slept fitfully through the day, his dreams erratic and non-sensical. He walked down a long, dark corridor to the light at the end, which turned out to be a cryogenic stasis chamber. He thought he saw her face behind the glass, but when he finally released the seal, it _hiss_ ed open, revealing nothing more inside than his own Paladin class T-60 helmet, spattered with dry blood.  _You should leave while you can._ Adams' and Cutler's voices echoed in his head, getting louder, repeating on a loop. "No!" He heard himself screaming into the darkness, the sound drowning in the rising echoes.  

He sat up, a film of cold sweat covering his body. It was fifteen hundred hours. He bathed himself with a can of purified water and a clean rag. He found soap in his footlocker, and held it out in front of his nose, inhaling deeply. The smell stirred his memories; memories of elevators and vertibirds and the sound of gunfire over his shoulder. Danse cradled the soap, his eyes wet. The Institute had removed his personhood and left him with nothing. He wasn't a man. Maxson was right about everything. He had never loved Adams. He had no heart to love her with. He would never grow old with her, or give her children. He was a filthy fucking synth. _She'll come to her senses soon, and walk away,_ Danse decided wearily. _Or better yet, put two between my eyes. She's good at that._ He laughed at his own dark humor. He prepared his power armor and guns for a fight, lest he run into one. _Right now though, my job is to bring back the_ _savio_ _r_ _of the wasteland. Our Sole Survivor._ He paused, remembering a conversation with Maxson that felt like eons ago. _Don't make my mistakes._  

He wouldn't. He'd bring back his vault dweller alive. 

 

The Red Rocket Truck Stop was just as he'd left it, dark and decrepit looking; hiding the mind-blowing collection of power armor inside. Molerats had bored holes everywhere, making the exterior almost as deadly as mine field. One wrong step and you'd be on the ground with a broken neck in a heartbeat; and then the hidden laser turrets would probably finish you off. Danse could certainly see the appeal. Maybe Adams would let him move in here, and then at least he would be close to her in Sanctuary Hills; if she needed him. He'd have all her power armor to work on; maybe he could make a living off repairing it and selling it for her. That wouldn't be so bad. He approached the bridge to the quiet settlement with caution. It was only just after sunset.

Jun Long aimed a missile launcher at his head. "Who is it?" The man called timidly into the darkness.

Danse swallowed, eyeing off the four turrets standing between himself and Jun; two laser, two machine gun. Adams took no chances when it came to _her people_. "It's Pala..." he trailed off. "It's Danse, Jun. I need to see Preston." 

"Where's Adeline?" Jun barked nervously.  

"I don't know. That's why I'm here."  

"Oh." There was a long pause. "I guess you should come in then."  

Danse struggled not to roll his eyes, and passed under the security bridge. Jun appeared at the bottom of the stairs, his face pale and wan in the quickly fading light. "Preston will be in the rec room with the others. I think they finally found all the balls for the pool table. They were talking about starting a tournament." 

"Outstanding." Danse replied testily. He followed Jun in silence. The rec room was lit up, and music was playing loudly. He could make out the _click_ of the acrylic spheres hitting each other as they bounced across the table. "I'll wait outside." He told Jun, who nodded in response. 

 

"Paladin Danse," Preston greeted him with stiff reserve. Danse didn't bother correcting him. 

"Can we talk in private?" he replied with gritted teeth. The other man nodded, dark eyes unreadable. He lead Danse into a dark house, switching on a dim lamp, and took a seat at the long dining table. Danse looked around. There was a well-stocked pantry and ice-box off the main room, which held the dining table as well as some oddly inviting plush lounges, and an elegant green armchair. An elderly woman was sitting in it, snoozing gently, gnarled old hands folded in her lap. 

"That's Mama Murphy," Preston announced quietly. "Keep your voice down. I don't want to wake her." 

Danse took a seat opposite the Minuteman. "Sorry to intrude on you like this," Danse kept his voice low. Preston's lips twisted. 

"I assume it's important. Why else would you bother the lowly people of the Commonwealth?" Garvey asked sarcastically. 

"Adams is MIA. Missing in action. She disappeared after completing a highly classified mission for the Brotherhood of Steel." 

"Which you are no longer a member of, and this 'highly classified' mission was taking out the Railroad."  

Danse's jaw dropped. "How did you know?" 

"The people of the Commonwealth are more intelligent and more resourceful than the Brotherhood of Steel will ever give us credit for." Preston shook his head. "Do you have any leads on Adeline's whereabouts?"  

The other man's immediate and urgent concern for Adams affected Danse deeply. Sometimes he forgot how many lives she had touched.  

 

He took a deep breath. "I believe she might have returned to her vault. Vault one-eleven." 

Garvey was already shaking his head. "That's impossible." 

"Why?" Danse demanded. 

"Because you can only get to vault one-eleven through Sanctuary. And believe me, we would know if Adeline had come home."  

"He's right, Preston." Danse's head snapped over his shoulder. The old woman was awake, and her milky eyes gleamed in the dim light. 

"Who gave you chems, Mama?" Garvey scowled. 

Mama Murphy gave out a wheezing laugh. "I don't need chems to See the Sole Survivor's light in the darkness." She rasped. 

"What are you talking about?" Danse demanded. 

"Mama Murphy has the Sight. She had it, until Adeline convinced her to give up chems," he added sternly, glaring affectionately at the woman. 

"I still get flashes on occasion," Mama sighed, her head turning towards Danse, and he felt her blind eyes burning into his. "The woman out of time loves a man out of sync." Her raspy cackle raised the hairs on Danse's neck. "How appropriate." She sobered suddenly, her face twisting into an ugly grimace. "If you fail, we'll all be out of time." Mama Murphy's voice was suddenly sharp and clear. "Don't let that happen, Danse. Don't let the world end." She gave a hacking cough, and relaxed back into her chair with her eyes closed. 

Danse raised an eyebrow at Preston. "Keep an open mind," Preston took off his stupid hat and rested it on the table.  

 

"Is she a Psyker?" Danse tried to make sense of it. 

"I think so. She's never been exposed to FEV as far as I know, but she is older than she looks. She lived in Arroyo when she was a child." Garvey frowned, deep in thought.

"She could be descended from the original Vault Dweller," Danse stared down at the withered old husk of the woman in awe. 

"I've considered that," Preston sighed. "Can't make up my mind about it, and I sure as Hell don't want to pester Mama Murphy with painful questions. She hasn't had an easy life." 

"Who has, out here?" Danse muttered. 

"Amen." Garvey's teeth flashed white against his dark skin. "Look, if you think Adeline has locked herself in vault one-eleven, you're welcome to go see for yourself. Just do me one favor,"  

"One." 

"Alright. If she's there, bring her back here. Don't take her back to the Prydwen. Bring her down here, and let her sleep in her own bed, have breakfast in her own house, surround her with people who care about her. I don't think she's in a good place right now. I want your word, on your honor, whatever." Preston splayed both hands out on the table between them. 

"That's more than fair, Garvey. You have my word." The bigger man replied gruffly. Preston nodded, relieved.  

"I'll show you where to go." 

 

Preston carried a lantern ahead of Danse. They followed a worn path behind a couple of the houses, until they reached a small footbridge. "Follow this dirt track up the hill. I don’t know how to get inside but then I've never actually looked. I'm sure you'll work it out. I'll wait in Adeline's house; I'll put the lantern in the window so you know where to go. Bring our girl back, Paladin." Preston's voice was filled with emotion. 

"It's just Danse now." he replied, not quite sadly. 

"Right. Don't take too long or I'll be following you up there."  

Danse climbed the hill slowly, keeping an ear out for predators. At the top of the hill, he came across a great big plaque on the ground. He switched his headlamp on.  

 

 **1   1   1**  

 

 _Subtle, Vault-Tec. Real subtle_ _._ He looked around, not sure what he was searching for, a lever or something. _Anything._ A rusted out site office perched innocently off to the east, overlooking the vault. Danse made a bee-line for it, crossing his fingers. Inside, a faded red button and a burned out terminal sat conspicuously under the window overlooking the plaque. Danse hit the red button with a gauntleted fist, and waited. He counted to ten, and nothing happened. Annoyed, he stepped out of the site office and headed back for the plaque. As soon as his foot touched the steel, a low rumble escaped over the hills and the center ring began to descend. "Shit," he swore, leaping into the sinking metal. Bile filled his mouth as the empty black sky above began to disappear into an even blacker unknown. 

 

"Adams!" Danse barked into the darkness, his eyes slowly adjusting. A metal grate lifted before him and he stumbled off the elevator quickly, not wanting to miss his exit window. An empty suit of power armor stared him down menacingly. He recognized it woefully as his old Paladin class unit. He reached out, gingerly brushing the helm with heavy metal fingers. The dust swirled around him, and he squatted, aiming his headlamp at the floor. A set of small, human footprints walked away from the suit and up the stairs; over an even older set of the same, that were clearly leaving the vault in a hurry. Danse grunted to his feet. The X-01 Mk II was much bulkier than the T-60b and he was still adjusting. His brain was ticking over anxiously and he followed the footprints up the stairs. His sensors let him know the oxygen in the vault air was below minimum requirements, and he quickened his pace. He navigated his way through an office, and some kind of mess hall. Skeletons and dead radroaches littered the floor. Off one corridor he found a room, filled wall-to-wall with cryo chambers, like some kind of factory. Every single one contained a dead, frozen body. Some had fists, forever stilled, beating against the glass. Others had faces twisted in terror and agony, arms wrapped around torsos as they eternally struggled to find warmth. Few looked peaceful. Danse felt sick to his stomach. No-one deserved to die like this. Vault-Tec had been one of the biggest monsters behind the War; preying on the fear of their fellow men, conducting their illegal experiments behind that farce of a friendly blonde face. 

 

"...because, to me, it's only been two hundred and twelve days, but it's been _sixty years,_ Nate. _Sixty fucking years._ It was supposed to be our lifetime. I was so happy. I thought we were happy. Things had finally turned around for us." Danse held back. Adams was curled up on the floor at the foot of an open cryo chamber. The dim blue light washed over her. "I wish... I want to tell you you'd be proud of him. The truth is, he's a fucking monster. He's cold. He has no compassion. Nobody ever loved him, and that hurts me so much." She let out a gulping sob, and wiped her face with a hand. "When I first saw him, I thought it was you. It was like seeing a ghost. Your mother always called him _your little clone_. If she could have seen him... I wish you were here, Nathan. I wish you would just wake up, and tell me what to do. I'm out of time, and out of my depth. He's dying, did I tell you that? His body is riddled with aggressive malignant sarcomas, destroying his bones. Just like your dad. Talk about a family curse." 

 _The man on the roof._ The truth suddenly dawned on Danse. _Father is Shaun._ The elderly man she'd met on the roof of C.I.T. after Bunker Hill.

"I'm going to kill him. I'm going to destroy everything he's built. We made him. I signed us up for a Vault-Tec experiment. I'm going to undo that. I know you'd have no problem doing the same, you were never sentimental like that... I refuse to be haunted by what could have been. This is what _is_ , Nate. That's what you told me when you went away to war." Adams hiccuped. "I've done shitty things. Just like you. I killed someone I cared about, because someone I respected asked me too. I'm the sum of the choices I've made, but it's hard to live with them sometimes. I understand what you must have been going through when you came home. I am so, so sorry."

 

Danse stayed frozen in the shadows. Somehow he knew he had to let her finish. Adams was speaking to her husband as though he were still alive, and like accidentally overhearing her holotape recording in the Cambridge Police Station, it felt immensely private. But he couldn't take his eyes off her, he needed to know she wouldn't disappear again. He'd almost lost her too many times, and besides, he'd already heard too much.

"I avenged you." She began again, softly. "I shot the man who shot you, and took our son. I wonder if you would have done the same. I wonder how you would have reacted when your son told you that you were his science project. Without his _divine intervention_ I wouldn't even be sitting here, I'd still be over there. A frozen TV dinner." Adams laughed, a dead sound echoing through the vault. "This life is hard-edged and remorseless. You'd have thrived, I can see it. I still can't believe I'm here instead of you. It's a sick joke. Waking up has been one sick joke after the other." She put her face in her hands. "I'm trying to be the woman you think I am. You have no idea how comforting that holotape you left me is. I guess I'm trying to say, thank you. But there's more to life for me. I won't hide in Sanctuary Hills, pining for you and feeling sorry for myself. I'm not that kind of person, and you would never have loved me at all if I was. I've fallen for someone else. It hurts even more than I remember. I need to tell you about him though, because you're my best friend, Nate. He's a good man. He's honest and selfless. He's handsome; not the same way you are, but you know me. I never really had a 'type'. As a person..." Danse's breathing hitched. "His strength is immense. Inside and out. If half of the population were a quarter of the man he is, there would be nothing in the wasteland to fear. I would never want to feel unworthy of you Nathan; we shared everything. But I can't go on grieving forever, and if I did you would think less of me." 

 

Adams rose slowly to her feet. "This is the last time. I'm saying goodbye to vault one-eleven, goodbye to you. Goodbye to the woman you married, because she died down here, with you."  

Danse crept closer to the light. Nathan Adams was tall and broad-shouldered. _Of course he is, he was military._ Adams' hand caressed his cheek, and brushed her fingers over his frozen blonde hair. She tucked something into the pocket of his vault suit and turned her eyes up to Danse, her face wet. 

"Take all the time you need." he told her gently. She nodded, and he turned his back. He felt warm, hot even. Confused. He heard the _hiss_ of the chamber compressing behind him, and felt the air move as Adams passed him. Danse turned to face the man in the vault. _Ad victoriam, soldier._ He raised his fist to his chest respectfully, and turned on his heel, following Adams towards the exit. 

"And up we go, together again." Adams remarked. "It's always elevators, isn't it?" Her hands were folded across her chest and she didn't look at him when she spoke. His power armor looked good on her, he decided. Briefly, he imagined the two of them as Paladins, fighting their way across the wasteland in the name of the Brotherhood of Steel, never apart. He forced the thought away. It would never be, not now. 

"If you have a moment, I have something... personal I'd like to discuss." The elevator reached the top. Light was just beginning to peek over the horizon. 

"Are you okay, Danse?" The concern in her voice was above and beyond what he expected from her. 

"I'm sorry. I... really thought this would be easier to talk about. There's always so much I want to say, but I don't even know where to start." They sat down together on the edge of the small cliff, looking out over Sanctuary Hills, waiting for the sun to rise. 

 

"Whatever it is, I will help you get through this." The conviction in her quiet voice made him believe her. 

"I don't know if anything will help me get through this," he admitted. "I've spent my entire life; or at least, what I perceived as my life, following a plan to shape my own future. But since my banishment, I feel lost. I exist without purpose. For the first time since the moment I signed my name down to join the Brotherhood of Steel, I don't have all the answers. I don't have a plan. It scares the hell out of me, Adams." He let himself feel the fear he'd been holding at bay, closing his eyes.  

Adams exhaled. "It's impossible to plan, Danse. I planned to spend the rest of my life down there, raising my son, loving my husband. Look what happened." She gestured her hands out over the Commonwealth

"That's exactly my point. I'm a machine that thinks like a human that was trained to hunt the very thing I've become." He released a short, borderline hysteric laugh. "Don't you understand? Everything I had, _everything I knew,_ is gone." _Of course she understands_. It felt selfish the moment it left his lips but he suddenly felt like being selfish. He was angry. "In the span of a few hours, my identity was ripped from me and my world turned upside-down. At least what you had was something real, something..." He struggled. " _Tangible._ Your husband and your son were living, breathing humans who loved you and cared for you. The sons of bitches who created me couldn't even be bothered to implant memories of having siblings, or parents. I don't even know how much of my own past is artificial and how much is real. Can you even imagine that?" He spat the last sentence. "I started out as nothing. And I've ended up as nothing. And I don't even know what the Hell to do about it." 

"I am not going to sit here and play _'my life is worse than yours'_ , Danse." Adams snapped. "If you want to live you need to fight. If you give up, you've already lost." She added softly, looking up at him, as fiercely loyal as ever. 

 

"I'm not giving up. Not yet." He couldn't look at her. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I'm missing the point. My life is starting over." The rays of the sun began to kiss the lake on the other side of Sanctuary. "I'm slowly coming to terms with everything I've lost. And everything I've gained." He looked at his boots. "Which includes something important you've made me realize." 

"Oh?" Adams turned her gaze back to Sanctuary Hills. 

"I don't know if it's friendship, or an anomaly in my programming. After all, I'm not... not really human." Danse faltered. "Whatever it is, I can't deny that I'm feeling closer to you than anyone else I've ever met." 

"I feel the same way." Adams scratched lightly at the stitches on her cheek, and Danse gently peeled her fingers away from them. "I'm only hoping that it's more than just friendship." Grey eyes peeked up at him sideways, from underneath her lashes.

Danse caught his breath. "Are you saying... you're in love with me?" The way she looked at him suggested so, and he thought his head would explode with disbelief. "It doesn't make any sense, Adams. After everything the Brotherhood taught you, how could you be in love with m-… a machine?" 

"If you were just a machine, would we even be having this conversation? I'm not in love with a machine, Danse. I'm in love with you. I love you." She looked at the sky, breathless, the most beautiful smile Danse had ever seen breaking across her face. His chest ached painfully. 

"I'm... not sure, really, what the Institute embedded into my brain to handle things like this. If I was human, wouldn't this be a Hell of a lot easier?" He met Adams' eyes warily. 

"You're more important to me than that. You're more important to me than anything, haven't you realized yet? You're more human than most people could ever dream of being." She bit her lip, still smiling. The sun was just reaching them now, alighting on her hair; setting it on fire like the day they met. 

 

"You don't know how much it means to me, to hear you say that." He gave her fingers a small squeeze between their gauntlets. He sighed, thoughts running circles in his head. "Look, I'm not going to lie to you. You're going to have to be patient with me. Coming to terms with all these human feelings is going to be a difficult journey, I think. But if we can tackle those obstacles together, I think that this relationship could last a very long time." 

Her smile was as blinding as her hair. "You'll never have to do anything alone again." she replied mischievously. 

"I better not live to regret this." Danse growled playfully back.   

"So long as you're living." Adams added, suddenly serious.  

Below them, Sanctuary Hills began to stir. The morning had all the trappings of preceding a beautiful day in the Commonwealth.

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer, Mama Murphy is not a blood relative of the Vault Dweller or the Chosen One. The Chosen One was 20 in 2221 and if they were roughly the same age, Mama Murphy would only be around 86 years old and I think she is much older than that. She is also definitely not Pat, the Vault Dweller's wife and the Arroyo Elder.
> 
> I'm pretty sure (haha, it's all in my head and I don't even know) that she was a young girl who grew up in Arroyo, which would put her somewhere under 120 years old, which sounds about right to me. Where she got her Psyker powers, I have no idea; likely she was born with them due to some kind of radiation exposure which could also be an excuse for her extended age. She definitely knew the Chosen One, perhaps they were friends. She would have been around in Arroyo to watch as it came to be a great city under the Chosen One's influence. There's probably some angst-ridden drama there, but I won't speculate.


End file.
